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Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I agree with my noble friend. His amendment is very modest, as were the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis. Sub-paragraph (2)(f) is mean and unnecessary in the light of legislation passed over the 14 years that I have been a Member of this House, which has progressively excluded refugees at the point of entry and made life more difficult for them. The noble Lord has international experience and will appreciate the situation of many of these individuals. The subsection penalises not only migrants but also genuine refugees who have been forced to enter the country illegally. We have quarrelled again and again about passports and the necessity for destroying documents, and there are many genuine people in this country who have had to go through those hurdles. As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said, the Government are on dangerous legal ground because states are obliged under Article 31 of the convention not to impose penalties on account of illegal entry. That is fairly straightforward. He also told us that Article 34 requires states to make every effort to expedite naturalisation. Having been stripped of their own citizenship, refugees surely have a strong moral claim to adoption by another state. The Bill as it stands takes them further away from the path of citizenship that the Government intend to lay for them and which we have heard so much about.